Hello!
December is fast receding and all manner of things have been happening.
Tailored Truths has just received a Brand New 5* Review on Goodreads, the comments so very complimentary. It's really a boost since Tailored Truths reviews are woefully lacking, the novel having been launched in September 2025.
You can read the full new review here, just scroll down to find the one written by Stella Jane
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/239555674-tailored-truths
IN OTHER NEWS:
Preparation for the Christmas Season is ongoing. My Christmas Cake is now iced and ready to eat and I've baked my first batch of mince pies - though the pies are already almost gone.
Some of the pies were taken to a friend who recently moved house. I had a wonderful day driving down to the north Fife coast, an area I may never have been to before. I have driven over the Tay Road bridge, though that's not a usual route I would take when visiting people in the Edinburgh or Glasgow areas. What I don't recall doing before is immediately exiting the bridge on the Fife side to visit one of the two little towns that nestle there on the north Fife coast. One is named Tayport, and the other is Newport on Tay- very similar and easy (for me) to mix up.
When doing some transport research a few years ago for Novice Threads, Book 1 of my Silver Sampler Series, I came across the early Victorian version of Tayport's name which was the much longer name of Ferryport on Craig. My character Margaret was travelling from her home in Milnathort (Kinross Shire) to Edinburgh in 1850 and I was investigating what transport possibilities there were for her journey. Would she have travelled by a mail coach? Or by train, if there was one? Or some other way?
During the investigations, I found out some really interesting information about trains throughout Fife, Kinross Shire, and what we now term the Central Belt of Scotland, during the 1840s and early 1850s. Train lines were established by the era and Margaret could have gone west towards Perth, and then South to Edinburgh by way of some connecting railway companies. Another possibility was more convoluted - she could have travelled by train to the port of Burntisland (South Fife coast) from where she would have taken the Leviathan Ferry (my earlier Leviathan blog) across to just north of Edinburgh at Granton on the Firth of Forth. From Granton the train track led into the centre of Edinburgh.
Margaret taking a train trip at almost twelve years of age sounded quite exciting to write about but realistically - since her parents had little money to hand - I decided that Margaret would have been travelling by the cheapest form of travel which was the local carter's wagon to the ferry port of Burntisland on the South-Fife coast.
Although I have my character Margaret crossing the River Forth in a passenger ferry (essentially a large rowing boat), I contrived to add a little about the fascinating Leviathan 'Roll On roll Off' rail ferry which was in operation by 1850. This marvel of early Victorian engineering is mentioned again in Book 2, Tailored Truths, when my strong secondary character Jessie's husband is employed by the Napier shipyard in Govan (now part of Glasgow), the same engineering company who conceived and built the Leviathan.
Having done the tiniest bit of research on Tayport, I find that there was a ferry across the Tay plying between Broughty (Ferry) near Dundee and Ferryport on Craig, a rail ferry that was a sister type of 'Roll on Roll off ' ferry similar to the Leviathan. However, Edinburgh and Northern Railway, the company who set up the ferry found the name too cumbersome to print on a ticket in 1851, so they shortened it to Tayport!
A tiny nugget but being the geek I am, I love it!
Will I use the information about the Tay crossing in Book 3 when I transport Margaret from Aberdeen to St. Andrews on the Fife coast? That is yet to be decided...but what do you think?
Slainthe!
